58% of Columbus third-graders fail state exam, risk being held back

Sunday

Dec 8, 2013 at 12:01 AMDec 8, 2013 at 11:47 AM

Sometime before May, when they take the reading test again, more than 2,350 Columbus third-graders have to get better. Nearly 3 in 5 Columbus City Schools kids who took the state's third-grade reading exam in October did not pass.

Jennifer Smith Richards, The Columbus Dispatch

Sometime before May, when they take the reading test again, more than 2,350 Columbus third-graders have to get better.

Nearly 3 in 5 Columbus City Schools kids who took the state’s third-grade reading exam in October did not pass.

Even though the district — and other large, urban districts in Ohio — anticipated this, based on past performance, this is the first year that the kids actually will be held back, under what is known as Ohio’s third-grade reading guarantee.

For some of Columbus’ elementary schools, almost the entire third grade faces repeating the grade if nothing improves. Some kids will be exempt from retention because they have special needs or are learning English as a second language. But at Trevitt Elementary, 88 percent of students did not pass. At Arlington Park, 85 percent didn’t. At Cassady, 81 percent failed.

In fact, at 56 of the district’s 75 schools, more than half of students failed.

“We have a crisis on our hands,” Interim Superintendent Dan Good said, adding that the district is “sounding the alarm communitywide.”

Good recently asked employees of Columbus schools to pitch ideas to help kids improve in reading — quickly. Emergency meetings have been held, even as recently as last week, and some of those ideas are being put into action. More-detailed data analysis is going out to schools than has been provided in the past.

It already is helping, Good said. The district now knows that vocabulary is a widespread problem for third-graders.

School-bus drivers are likely to keep boxes of books on board as part of a “read and ride” initiative. Food-service workers plan to label cafeterias with words and make vocabulary walls. Reading is going to be visible everywhere, district officials say.

Sandee Donald, who oversees the reading curriculum for Columbus schools, said the district is trying to increase uninterrupted reading time. It is designing “parent academies” to teach parents what skills their kids need and how to help them.

“It’s a lot of work. And we’re working,” said Maria Malik, the principal of Leawood Elementary on the city’s Far East Side. At Leawood, 74 percent of kids didn’t pass the October test.

The district says it is doing everything it can to help children read on grade level. It is leaning heavily on one of its new efforts, a reading-mentor initiative called Reading Buddies. Volunteers, often from businesses, go to schools on their lunch breaks to read with a child and help teachers track their struggles and achievements.

Reading Buddies has 360 volunteers in schools. The district says it needs many more.

Melody Bartoe has signed on to help at Leawood. Bartoe, who lives in Grove City, is a retired elementary-school teacher. She said teachers and volunteers can make great progress with students who are close to passing. They’ll be OK by May.

The others? The farther behind kids are, the longer it takes to catch up. It often can’t happen in one school year, she said.

The task ahead of Columbus, which is the state’s largest school district, seems even greater when you consider how far some students have to go.

Nearly 350 third-graders fell just below passing. Of those, 108 are exactly two points shy of meeting the minimum passing requirement. But many, many more Columbus students — more than 2,000 — have a longer way to go by May. They score at the bottom level of the reading test, called “ limited.”

Some educators (and researchers) argue that holding kids back doesn’t lead to better academic outcomes. Other critics of the reading guarantee say the threat of a deadline implies that teachers haven’t been trying hard to get kids on grade level until now.

But the alternative to holding kids back early is worse, said Richard Ross, Ohio’s superintendent of public instruction — kids get passed along until they get frustrated, stop attending school regularly and eventually drop out.

He has taken a no-excuses approach to the third-grade reading guarantee.

“We just have to ensure that these youngsters can read. It just has to be,” Ross said. “We just have to stop this nonsense and teach them to read.”

The guarantee is not about punishment, he said, but about creating a sense of urgency to make sure children aren’t falling farther behind year after year.